The Absence of Colour

By Bruce McRae

A blind man confided in me.
He said the night grows darker
with every flint that’s been struck.
He said the hand sees all
and moonlight is as cold
as the absence of colour.
He claimed all his other senses were alive
but the dead continued struggling.
“Their breaths are as ragged as an old flag,”
he said, cupping his ear for emphasis.

Then he lifted his head,
the way a dog hearing distant footsteps might.
“There’ll be snow tonight,” he told me,
as if informed by a superior power.
And it snowed that night.
Snow as deep as a mother’s fear.
As heavy as the new year coming.

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,600 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are ‘The So-Called Sonnets’ (Silenced Press); ‘An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy’; (Cawing Crow Press); ‘Like As If’ (Pski’s Porch); ‘Hearsay’ (The Poet’s Haven).